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Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885)

Ulysses S. Grant rose from
command of an Illinois regiment to general-in-chief of all Union armies during the
American Civil War (1861–1865),
and served as the eighteenth president of the United States (1869–1877). Victor at
important battles in the western theater, Grant arrived in Virginia in March 1864 as
a newly minted lieutenant general and the military leader of all Union forces. He
took the field with the Army of the
Potomac rather than running the war from a desk in Washington, D.C., and
provided de facto direction of that army from May 1864 until April 1865. Grant's
stature as the preeminent Union general catapulted him into the White House for two
terms, and his legacy, though still debated, remains that of the soldier who won the
war for the Union. MORE...

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Early Life

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822, into a
successful middle-class family. He attended the United States Military Academy at
West Point, where he accumulated an average academic record and finished in 1843
ranked twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine. Due to a mistake in his nomination
papers, Grant also left the academy with the name by which he would be known for
the rest of his life.

Grant served with distinction in the Mexican War (1846–1848), in
contrast to his record during the rest of his antebellum military career. Assigned
to isolated posts, he languished, missing his wife and growing family. (In 1848,
he married Julia Boggs Dent, the daughter of a Missouri slave owner and a distant
relative of Confederate general James Longstreet.) Like most other military officers, Grant sought
solace in the bottle, although his ability to handle alcohol proved far below the
norm. He resigned his commission in 1854 and repaired to Missouri. For the next
seven years Grant pursued a variety of professional endeavors, none of which
brought him notable success, though his reputation as an abject failure has been
magnified.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was living in Galena, Illinois, where he
clerked in his father's store. The need for trained officers, coupled with the
patronage of the local congressman, secured him the colonelcy of the 21st Illinois
Infantry, a rough- and-tumble outfit that Grant polished into efficiency. His
success at this humble level of command launched an unprecedented rise in military
responsibility.

In the Western Theater

Grant received promotion to brigadier general in August 1861 and took command at
Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip of his adopted state. In February 1862, he
captured two Confederate strongholds, Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort
Donelson on the Cumberland River, opening vast stretches of the Confederacy to
Union occupation and giving the North its first significant battlefield victory.
(That victory came at the expense of the Confederate commander, former Virginia
governor John B. Floyd, who
fled before receiving Grant's famous demand for unconditional surrender.) Two
months later, Grant endured a catastrophic surprise attack along the Tennessee
River near Shiloh Church, only to redeem his defeat the next day in what was the
bloodiest battle in American history up to that point. Grant suffered severe
criticism for his lapse at Shiloh, the jealousy of his superior officer, Major
General Henry W. Halleck, and renewed whispers about excess drinking. Under
pressure to remove Grant, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln demurred, stating, "I can't
spare this man; he fights."

Lincoln's judgment proved sound, as Grant
survived his critics and orchestrated a classic campaign in the spring of 1863
that resulted in the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Confederates' bastion
on the Mississippi River. Transferred to Chattanooga, Tennessee, that autumn,
Grant reversed Union defeat by lifting the siege of Chattanooga and then driving
the Confederate army into retreat at the Battles of Lookout Mountain and
Missionary Ridge. By then, Grant had become the single-most-successful Union
general in the field, and Lincoln and the U.S. Congress rewarded him with a
promotion to lieutenant general and supreme command of all the Union armies.

That is not to say that Grant ignored other
theaters of the war. In fact, his unique contribution to the Union war effort
became his ability to launch simultaneous offensives in multiple areas in order to
keep the pressure on the Confederate armies across the map. His plan to attack
Mobile, Alabama, foundered but his successor in the West, Major General William
Tecumseh Sherman, focused unrelenting attention on the Confederate army defending
northern Georgia, resulting eventually in the capture of Atlanta in September
1864.

In Virginia, Grant ordered Meade to concentrate on pursuing and attacking
Confederate general Robert E.
Lee's Army of
Northern Virginia, rejecting the traditional focus on capturing the
Confederate capital at Richmond. Meade would receive help from two smaller armies. Major General
Franz Sigel would move up
the Shenandoah Valley,
threatening Lee's strategic left flank with an eye toward severing the rail
connections between the Valley and Richmond. Major General Benjamin F. Butler, meanwhile, would lead his
new Army of the James up the
James River to City Point
and Bermuda Hundred, twenty miles below Richmond, to pressure the capital's back
door while Meade pounded on the front. Grant set his campaigns in motion during
the first week of May 1864.

The next eleven months would bring an unprecedented brand of warfare to Virginia.
Rather than fighting a brief battle and then separating to lick their wounds, the
armies commenced a series of engagements that followed one on the other without
interruption. Grant dictated this style of warfare and it earned him mixed
reviews. Following tactical draws at the Wilderness (May 5–6), Spotsylvania (May 8–21), and North Anna (May 23–26),
Grant suffered a lopsided defeat at Cold Harbor (June 3). This series of
engagements, known collectively as the Overland Campaign, resulted in more casualties
for Grant than Lee had soldiers in his entire army. Critics labeled the Union
commander a butcher and pointed out that his military acumen amounted to playing a
grim game of human arithmetic, counting on raw attrition to accomplish what
superior generalship could not.

"The Yankees came up to the butchery
splendidly," wrote a Georgia soldier after the Battle of Cold Harbor, "and our men
like shooting them so well, that they say as long as they can get ammunition and
something to eat, they will stand in the breastworks and let Grant bring up the
whole Yankee nation."

Grant next targeted the railroad hub of Petersburg, twenty-three miles south of
Richmond. After his assaults failed to capture the city between June 15 and June
18, Grant incrementally captured all the supply lines serving the city. His
climactic attack on April 2, 1865, broke Lee's lines and forced the Confederates
to evacuate both Richmond and Petersburg that night.

Grant could not prevent the Army of Northern Virginia from escaping but he did
thwart Lee from turning south and uniting with another Confederate army in North
Carolina. Grant trapped
Lee near Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and accepted the Confederate
commander's surrender that afternoon. Although the war would continue for a few
more weeks, Grant's conquest of Lee marked the practical end of the conflict.

The Postwar Years

Grant continued to serve as
general-in-chief after Lincoln's assassination and during the administration of
U.S. president Andrew Johnson. Despite Grant's having held no political office and
seeking none, the demands of the nation proved too much to resist during the
tumultuous final year of Johnson's presidency. Grant accepted the Republican
nomination for president and easily won election in 1868, carrying all but eight
states. His reelection in 1872 provided an even wider margin of victory.

Unfortunately, Grant's administration did not justify the voters' confidence.
Grant brought the same untutored trust and honesty to the White House as he had to
the battlefield, but unscrupulous subordinates betrayed him. Racked by corruption
and scandal, his presidency marked a low point in American politics.

Personally untainted by the excesses of
his administration, Grant toured the world as a sort of first citizen of the
United States. He was again victimized by schemers, however, and late in his life
poor investments reduced him to dire financial straits. Grant struggled to finish
his memoirs while battling throat cancer, and aided by the writer Mark Twain, his
two-volume work appeared in 1885 to critical acclaim. Shortly after completing his
manuscript, Grant died at his cottage in Mount McGregor, New York, and his remains
rest in Grant's Tomb, a spectacular mausoleum on Riverside Drive in New York
City.

General Grant Evaluated

Ulysses S. Grant occupies a unique place in Civil War history. Practically devoid
of flamboyance and show, persistently accused of domination by demon rum, and his
successes diminished by critics of his alleged callous disregard of the lives of
his men, Grant has never quite enjoyed the reputation that his battlefield
accomplishments seem to warrant. Yet no man in uniform on either side wielded more
influence on the outcome of the Civil War.

If Grant lacked the sort of colorful personality that endeared him to his men, his
steady determination and quiet confidence earned him their respect and loyalty.
"He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head
through a brick wall, and was about to do it," wrote one observer. That tenacity
explains much of his success.

There is no evidence that Grant's drinking
ever influenced his behavior on a battlefield. There can be no doubt, however,
that Grant could not handle his liquor, and despite the best efforts of a staff
officer to keep him sober, the general fell off the wagon a time or two during the
war. Still, this flaw emerges as irrelevant to Grant's performance as a military
commander.

Two schools of thought still swirl around Grant's grasp of military operations.
His critics—especially those influenced by the Lost Cause interpretations of the war—argue with
little persuasiveness that Grant's victories during the last year of the war owed
more to the expanding disparity of resources between North and South than any
particular military genius on the part of the Union commander. But to dismiss
Grant as a plodding and unimaginative officer ignores the bold and brilliant
campaigns of maneuver that brought about victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga
against the determination and skill of his opponents.

Perhaps Grant's most important military attributes were his dedication to seizing
and holding the initiative, his grasp of the political nature of modern war, and
his character as a general, described by some as moral courage. "The art of war is
simple enough," wrote Grant. "Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as
you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving
on." This philosophy guided Grant through all of his campaigns, particularly those
in Virginia where, when faced with similar adverse circumstances, all his
predecessors had blinked.

Grant fully understood the importance of
operating within the context of political realities, a trait he shared with the
war's other great commander, Robert E. Lee. He avoided becoming embroiled in
policy matters and manifested no overt political ambitions. This earned him the
trust and confidence of Abraham Lincoln and sustained him even when events on the
battlefield turned against him.

Finally, Grant believed in himself, and once committed to a course of action, he
pursued that tack even in the face of setbacks and naysayers. Sometimes, such as
at Cold Harbor, this trait betrayed him, but at Shiloh, Vicksburg, the Wilderness,
and beyond, Grant's determination served him well. Although far from perfect,
Ulysses S. Grant's generalship deserves all of the praise accorded it by posterity
and only a portion of the criticism.

Time Line

April 27, 1822
- Hiram Ulysses Grant is born in the Ohio River town of Point Pleasant, Ohio.

1839
- Hiram Ulysses Grant is admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point under the name Ulysses Simpson Grant, Simpson being his mother's maiden name. He uses this name the rest of his life.

1843
- Ulysses S. Grant graduates twenty-first out of thirty-nine in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

1846–1848
- Ulysses S. Grant serves in the Mexican War.

1854
- Ulysses S. Grant resigns his military commission and returns to civilian life in Saint Louis, Missouri.

August 9, 1861
- Ulysses S. Grant receives a commission as a brigadier general in the Western Department.

November 7, 1861
- Ulysses S. Grant commands at his first significant Civil War engagement in Belmont, Missouri.

February 1862
- Ulysses S. Grant captures forts Henry and Donelson in western Tennessee and earns national renown as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

April 6–7, 1862
- Ulysses S. Grant commands at the Battle of Shiloh, where his army is surprised on the first day of battle, only to rally and win the engagement the following day.

July 4, 1863
- Confederate lieutenant general John C. Pemberton surrenders Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Ulysses S. Grant. He chooses Independence Day in hopes that Grant will provide him better terms. This is a turning point of the war, splitting the Confederacy in two. It comes a day after the Confederate loss at Gettysburg.

October–November 1863
- Ulysses S. Grant is named commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, lifts the siege of Chattanooga, and wins important victories at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.

March 10, 1864
- Ulysses S. Grant is promoted to lieutenant general and named general-in-chief of all U.S. armies.

May 4–June 12, 1864
- Ulysses S. Grant serves as the de facto commander of the Army of the Potomac during the Overland Campaign.

June 15, 1864–April 2, 1865
- Ulysses S. Grant presides over the Petersburg Campaign and effects the evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg.

April 9, 1865
- Confederate general Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia surrender to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.

March 4, 1869–March 4, 1877
- Ulysses S. Grant serves two terms as eighteenth president of the United States.

Contributed by A. Wilson Greene, the president of Pamplin Historical Park & The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier near Petersburg, Virginia. He is the author of Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War (2006) and The Final Battles of the
Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion (2008).